Duplicator is an indispensable plugin for WordPress developers. After developing a WordPress website offline, it is quite easy to upload the finished product to live server. But the process may fail if the total file size becomes bigger than 100 MB. Duplicator Pro version has the limit increased to 2 GB. Let me explain how to bypass the limitation of Duplicator plugin (free version).
Resource:
You need Duplicator plugin, an offline website and server space to upload the site.
Procedure:
Install duplicator plugin in your offline WordPress installation. Watch this youtube video for a detailed instruction on installation of Duplicator plugin and related operation.
WordPress version 4.5.3 installation with Divi 2.7.7, a basic Divi child theme and Akismet 3.1.11 plugin takes approximately 40 MB disk space. Creating a duplicator package generates two files installer.php (345 KB) and a zipped file of 12.6 MB size.
Whenever any file is uploaded to WordPress Media area, it is uploaded and stored in uploads folder which is located in wp-content folder. So, if 10 images of 1 MB size (.JPG format) is uploaded in WordPress media, it will increase total size of WordPress installation to 10 MB more which in turn, also increases duplicator package size to additional 7.8 MB.
To bypass duplicator free version file size limitation and minimize total upload file size, we shall move the content of uploads folder out of the WordPress installation but keep the blank uploads folder and then create duplicator package. Now the duplicator package will be much smaller in size which can be uploaded to the live server and be installed without any issue.
After the transfer and package installation is complete, if you open the live site, you will find all the images are missing from the pages. You have to upload the moved media files to the uploads folder in server. Now you will find that the site is working as expected.
